A report by Donna Roberts and Rose Alper on the session by Judy Brady, activist and author of the column, “Cashing in on Cancer” for the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Berkeley, CA.

Judy Brady was diagnosed with cancer nearly 20 years ago. “It made me really angry,” she said. She’s one of the many who has channelled their anger into advocacy. For the last 15 years Brady has been working to build a movement that addresses the politics of breast cancer.

In a probing, thought-provoking speech, Brady drew links between the rising rates of cancer and increasing environmental pollution, and what the breast cancer movement could do to change the agenda. But first, she said, we need to understand what we’re dealing with: the politics and business of cancer.

Brady stated that since World War II, breast cancer rates have risen steadily, despite billions spent annually on research, and despite a growing cancer movement. In this same period, she emphasized, we, in the industrialized world, have allowed nearly unrestricted environmental pollution at a steadily increasing rate, primarily from widespread use of pesticides and toxic chemicals. Dramatic examples of contamination include the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the horrifying chemical accident in Bhopal, India and closer to home, at 3 Mile Island. Though most of us feel disconnected from such distant events, they all affect our global environment, and thus, our health. Other incidents of this nature, albeit on a smaller scale, take place in all our communities, polluting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the earth which grows the food we eat.

In the past 20 years, in response to the growing cancer epidemic, governments, drug companies and cancer societies have spent billions of dollars on research for the magic “cure”, yet with no significant success. And whenever a study indicates connections between breast cancer and pollutants, the response of so many of these organizations is to call for more of the same: more money for research, more money for treatments, for mammograms, for “feel good” programs, as Brady says, for “more of the same, while our numbers continue to rise”.

Typically, groups that advocate prevention (such as BCAM) to stop the epidemic are patently ignored, ridiculed or described as “unscientific” by most cancer and medical groups.

However, Brady underlined, we in the cancer movement hold in our hands the opportunity to push forward a new agenda, to change the priorities of where research money goes, but first, she said, “we have to wake up to the fact that we’re being made fools of.” She’s talking about our need to understand the politics, public relations and business of breast cancer.

Brady drew connections between large corporations like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Xeneca and others, manufacturers of pesticides and cancer drugs who heavily fund mainstream cancer societies, and often sit on their boards of directors.

She explained how these corporations hire public relations companies to mold how we think, to influence public opinion in order to maintain the status quo - the continued production and use of these pollutants and drugs. Brady said the typical response of “we need more research” when faced with damaging evidence linked to a company’s product, is a typical public relations ploy for diverting attention away from the damaging incident or evidence in question.

She named Burson-Marstellar as the P.R. firm responsible for “spin doctoring” tragic events such as the aforementioned oil spill and nuclear accident, as well as working to help Xeneca, the makers of Tamoxifen, when it became registered as a carcinogen. The P.R. firm also had a hand in linking the American Cancer Society to Florida Orange Juice Growers, whose products now proudly display the seal of the cancer society. Florida orange juice, she pointed out, is heavily sprayed with the carcinogenic pesticide, Roundup, a Monsanto product whose active ingredient is glyphosate, which has recently been linked to non-Hodgkins lymphoma. This is just one example of the tangled web most of us know nothing about.

It is crucial that we make it our business to become more media literate, able to decipher potentially deceiving messages in the news, in advertisements, and moreover, to understand that
market-driven companies, whose bottom line is the mighty dollar, rarely have the public’s health and well-being at the top of their agenda.

Brady challenged all of us to get informed and get involved, to trust that we can change the direction of the epidemic by putting pressure on the powers-that–be to direct money into prevention, into discovering the causes of cancer. We do not need to accept the status quo, she said, and we must act now, if we truly want to stop the rising tide of breast cancer—if we truly want our children and grandchildren never to hear the words, “you have cancer”.

Brady recalled that when she started working with breast cancer issues two decades ago, she never imagined she would be addressing an international conference... she wasn’t even sure she’d still be alive. But for any who attended her presentation, alive is a tremendous understatement!

An enthusiastic crowd gave Brady a standing ovation, after which Nancy Evans, moderator and producer of the film, “Rachel’s Daughters”, said she was reminded of the saying, “if you always do what you always did, then you’ll always get what you always got.”